


So you want to go to the Gold Saucer?

by Yenneffer



Series: Zack Week 2020 [2]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, I REGRET NOTHING, Kunsel is the best bro, M/M, Young Dumb and Pretty, Zack Fair & Cloud Strife Friendship, Zack Fair & Kunsel Are Best Bros, Zack Fair Being Zack Fair, Zack Week 2020, Zack is very open with his affections and spreads the love around, Zack the SOLDIER bicycle, accidental Zack/Genesis, and Hojo of all people, mentions of Sephiroth Genesis Tseng Cissnei, most of the pairings are implied, the Turks - Freeform, the real focus is kunsel and zack's bromance, what did he fall and land on his dick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:34:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26643811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yenneffer/pseuds/Yenneffer
Summary: Zack plots and schemes to get what he wants. This time, it’s an assignment to a mission in the Gold Saucer.But even a First Class SOLDIER sometimes needs a little help from a friend. Good thing he has so many, right?Written for Zack Week 2020 Day 2: Mission
Relationships: Zack Fair & Aerith Gainsborough, Zack Fair & Angeal Hewley, Zack Fair & Kunsel, Zack Fair & Reno, Zack Fair & The Turks, Zack Fair/Aerith Gainsborough, Zack Fair/Angeal Hewley, Zack Fair/Genesis Rhapsodos, Zack Fair/Sephiroth
Series: Zack Week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1938307
Kudos: 16





	So you want to go to the Gold Saucer?

**Author's Note:**

> I really love Zack for how friendly he is with everyone - I believe Shinra used to be a brighter place when he was around. So have a fic with Kunsel and Zack being the best of bros.

It has taken Zack weeks of planning and manoeuvring to get everything shipshape. First, he asked Angeal to pull some strings to get him assigned to a mission near the Gold Saucer. It could’ve gone better.

“There aren’t any monster hunts near the Gold Saucer at the moment,” his former mentor replies distractedly. “Why do you want to go there anyway?”

“Aww, come on Angeal... chocobo races, pretty girls to flirt with, and gambling dens opened 24/7? What’s not to want there?” Zack grins merrily as he starts stretching his arms in preparation for their friendly spar. They might be the same rank, but he still feels like he learnt so much more when pitting himself against a live opponent instead of training alone, and at this point him and Angeal could as well be a well-oiled machine, anticipating each other’s moves and coming up with new ways to surprise the other. It is so much more fun this way.

“Zack, you always put your money on the wrong chocobo, you’ve been in a steady relationship for 2 years now, and the last time you played cards with the Turks you ended up bartering away your three first-born children, all the clothes on your back to boot, AND a lock of Sephiroth’s hair. Now, are you going to tell me what you are really up to?”

“Ahh, no?”

“Then no, I’m not going to pull any strings to help you get in trouble. You do that well enough on your own.”

“Angeal, come on, I promise it’s nothing dishonourable!”

“I believe you.” The younger First beams at Angeal in perceived victory. “But I am still not going to do it.”

“You’re the worst!” Zack whines.

“I know. Shall we begin, then?”

“Yeah, yeah, bring it on, old man!”

“Brat.”

Angeal was a bust, then. Fortunately for Zack’s self-appointed mission, he is good at making friends with resourceful people who love to help out a buddy in need.

“A-ah, and what would I get out of this?”

“My eternal gratitude?”

A snort. “Try again, I already won that off you at poker.”

“Satisfaction of doing a good deed?”

Reno looks at him as if he didn’t believe he was real. “You do know what I am, right Zack?”

“My good buddy?”

“A Turk! I’m not in the business of doing good deeds!”

Zack sighed. “What do you want, then?”

“Well, now tha...”

The redhead is interrupted as their ears are assaulted by a loud boom and the whole office shakes around them. They’re on the 67th floor, how has Avalanche reached so far up...

Cissnei walks out of the Turks break room, suit immaculate as always but a sooty smear on one cheek. “Hi, Zack,” she greets, before turning to Reno. “I don’t know what you’ve done to the coffee machine, but you have 45 seconds before the boss dusts himself off and comes looking for you.”

Reno’s out the door before she’s finished her sentence.

“Say, Cissnei... how do you feel about doing a really good friend small favours?”

She raises an eyebrow. “What do you think?” And leaves.

“Kunsel, buddy... I need you. You’re my only hope!”

“... am I going to need a shovel?”

“That’s why I love you, man!” Zack pulls his friend into an one-armed hug and beams at him.

“Okay, I’ll bite. What have you gotten yourself into? And seriously, are there going to be any bodies to get rid of? Because then the Turks sound like a better option. No disrespect for me meant.”

“Come on, why would I need the Turks when I have you?”

“Well, Tseng did save both our asses when we started a riot that one time in Wall Market...”

“We would’ve handled it! Besides, I remember quite clearly that it was Seph who saved us!”

“That was Genesis, actually. He was in cosplay. But you were too trashed to really notice, I think.”

“That was Gen?!”

“Don’t worry, I was pretty wasted myself... I only noticed because he was quoting _Loveless_.”

“I thought he was serenading me! Are you seriously telling me, that the one time I thought I got to snog Seph, that it had really been Genesis all along?”

Kunsel sends Zack a sympathetic look. “Pretty much, yeah.”

Zack’s wail of frustration could be heard all the way up in the President’s office. Ten minutes later, Hojo gets invited to the Turks office to tell them exactly which of his experiments got loose this time, and if they needed to evacuate the premises.

“I need to uncross it from my bucket list! Why didn’t you tell me?” Zack sends his usual partner in crime a look of betrayed brotherhood, of broken trust, and buried dreams of still pulling everyone’s legs when they were decrepit old men together.

“Honestly?” Kunsel asks. “I thought it was pretty damn funny.”

“But Kuns! I even ambushed him in his office the next day, waited naked on his desk with only a ribbon over my dick and everything!” Zack whines gesticulating wildly. “No wonder he was so surprised!”

“Wait, you what? Oh man, poor General...” Kunsel snickers. “What did he do?”

“He was perfectly polite. Asked if I was cold and if I’d mistaken his office for ‘Geal’s.” He stops with a horrifying realisation. “Wait, you don’t reckon he thought me and Angeal were...”

“I hate to break it to you, sunshine, but everyone thought that about you and Angeal.”

“What!” Zack’s jaw drops to the floor. “Well... Everyone except for you, you mean?”

Kunsel looks at Zack with pity. “Who do you think started the rumours?”

“You little shit!” Zack lets out a truly haunting howl.

Hojo, annoyed at having his work interrupted, has just claimed that no creature had escaped from the labs and that he was going to leave now. Tseng’s furrowed brow suggests he should start telling them the truth, now if you please. On the other side of the door Reno starts the betting pool on what nasty is prowling the Shinra corridors this week.

So far, Heidegger’s in the lead.

“Sorry, man... but you gotta admit, the best rumours are those that have a grain of truth to them. And you two were always in each other’s pockets.”

Zack flops back on the floor in Kunsel’s apartment and, flushing, throws an arm over his face. He murmurs something too low for his friend to make out.

“Come again?”

“I said,” Zack lifts his arm so he could be heard. “That I used to have this embarrassing crush on Angeal, back in the day.” He speaks to the ceiling. “Nothing really came of it, obviously... although I did try to come on to him when I was sixteen.”

“Really? Did you scar him for life?”

He gives Kunsel the finger. Then reconsiders. “Ha, probably... I had some liquid courage, so my final approach wasn’t really the romantic, honourable wooing that I had been going for.” He snorts as he remembers his younger self. “I pretty much molested him on his own couch? Tried to sneak my hand down his pants, jumped in his lap, you know, the works. I was pretty dumb back then.”

Kunself looks at him fondly. “Don’t worry, man. You are still pretty dumb.”

“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up, man. But just wait; I’ll get you for those things with Gen and Angeal!”

“Bring it on.”

“Hey, Zack?”

“Hmm?”

“Whatever it is you need help with, I’ll do it. Even if we need a shovel for that.”

“Thanks, Kuns.” They’re lying on the floor together, both quiet and contemplative. Zack thinks of who he should take on his next assignment to Kalm. Maybe Cloud, the poor young trooper has had it rough recently, still unable to find his place among his squad. A change of pace and scenery might do him good, give him some breathing room. On the other hand, he knows that he can be making everything harder on Cloud by trying to help; jealousy is not an uncommon trait to be found in any army, and there must be some in Shinra’s ranks who resent Cloud for striking a friendship with a First Class SOLDIER. Those miserable bastards could think what they wanted about him, and Cloud really shouldn’t mind them either, but it’s easier said than done; insidious whispers and cruel rumours could make finding friends a real hardship.

He bites his lips, knowing he has little choice. He’s not going to abandon Cloud when he is so alone, no matter if in theory such action could bring the blonde closer to the people in his unit. Maybe if he takes Cloud and another trooper that works with him, and _make_ him see that Cloud’s not getting any special treatment because of their friendship, that all he’s achieved was on his own merit. He could ask around and find somebody reasonable. And not a miserable asshole. That would be useful.

“What’re you thinking about?” He asks Kunsel.

“How to hack into PRs computers without leaving a trace and replace their recruitment posters with pictures of Rufus Shinra in a pink tutu. You?”

“Nothing much,” he murmurs.

“Ah-ah.” Leaning on his elbows, Kunsel searches his face. “You sure?”

“Yeah, nothing I can’t deal with.”

“Okay, how about what you can’t deal with then? You said something about needing help earlier.”

“And I love you for agreeing without even asking.”

“Sure, what’s the worst that could happen? We once joined a gang together by accident, unless you’re planning to top that, I’m pretty much comfortable with whatever.”

Zack snorts, fondly. “You really did not want to get that tattoo, did you?”

“You’re lucky we got out before we had, too. I wasn’t the one with the over-protective mentor who would disapprove of how I was spending my free days. You wouldn’t have been able to hide a gang tattoo from him, of all things.”

Zack throws his head back, laughing. “Still, good times!”

Kunsel grins back at him. “Seriously, though. What do you need?”

“Have you ever tried hacking into Lazard’s computer?”

Intrigued, Kunsel straightens up to look him in the face properly. “Can’t say that I did, no. But. Should be doable enough. Why?”

“How do you feel about springing a mission to, say, Gold Saucer area? You and me?”

“Vacations on Shinra’s dime? Very noble, mister honour and dreams,” he teases, but really, they’re both in and they know it.

“I don’t feel sorry for the misers. I wanted to do this on my own time and when I requested the days off, you know what they said at HR? That all the unused days I’ve accumulated from last year are gone because I didn’t use them in time, and that I haven’t earned any this year yet.”

“That’s harsh,” Kunsel winces in sympathy.

“Right? When was I supposed to take them, anyway, with the way missions piled up at the end of the year... even Seph started looking as if he were fantasising about burning everything to the ground!”

“Ahh, the cafeteria incident...”

Zack cringes at the memory. The less said about the day the unflappable General lost his marbles at the innocuous-looking tempura shrimp (not that Zack was fooled – he’d learnt early on as a cadet that you should never trust seafood served in the cafeteria) after the General had returned from a mission dealing with Leviathan, the better.

“So. You in?”

“Do you really have to ask?” They high-five, and there’s that.

Upon their return Zack bids Kunsel goodbye, expertly evades Angeal who by now has no doubt heard about their non-mission to the Gold Saucer (and the hostage situation they may or may not have been a part of – but definitely have not started, no matter what that chief of police says!), drops by for a quick visit with Cloud to give him the cheerful chocobo plushie (“It made me think of you, Spike!”), Zack sneaks out to see Aerith.

He wishes he could take her with him, sometimes, to show her that the world was so much more than steel skies and Midgar’s industrial air. That outside its borders, there are still places where flowers bloomed in droves.

It’s complicated, not only because missions are out for obvious reasons and he has the worst possible luck on his holidays – besides, even outside uniform people recognised the glow of mako eyes, and that brought its own brand of complications, but also because he supposes they would get an entire entourage of chaperones following after them, courtesy of the Department of Administrative Research.

So for now they have this, a carefully selected and overpriced bag of seeds of plants grown by an eccentric man near the Gold Saucer. Until Zack can show her the world, he’ll keep bringing pieces of it to her.

“Hey, Aer,” he calls out as he walks into her church, waving jauntily to a distinct redhead loitering about at the edge of his vision. He closes the door. “Miss me?”

“Your ego is getting bigger every time I say yes, so... no,” she giggles as he comes over to give her a hug. He mock-gasps in injury at the answer. “But my business did! I’ve had a drop in ladies coming by to buy flowers while you’ve been gone, want to help fix that for me?”

“Using my good looks for money, huh? That’s a cut-edge business move!” He grins stupidly at the happy look in her eyes. “Let’s do this!”

They get her wagon ready and he stops her before they move out. “Happy birthday, Aerith,” he whispers, hugging her again and pressing the little bag into her palm. “Hope they serve you well.”

He kisses the top of her head as she clings to him, thinking that all the preparations and planning were worth it, just to get to spend a day with her.

Zack Fair, SOLDIER First Class on the job! Mission status: completed with success.


End file.
